Graphic Imagery and the Pitfalls of Euphemistic Media

'Unalive', 'Ouid', 'Opposite-of-love'. Do any of these sound familiar? The phenomenon of Algospeak, a portmanteau of algorithm and speak, has been a key feature of platforms like TikTok for around four years. They are used in place of words that are deemed - if the PR is to be believed - unsuitable for public sensibilities. Kill. Weed. Hate. Videos containing explicit diction in reference to sex, drugs, violence, etc., are suppressed by the algorithms responsible for reccommending content to users of many platforms, albeit more likely because they harm the public image of companies brought in close association thereto. In the three-sided model that many content-aggregation platforms use, the most important stakeholder is the entity which pays the bills; corporations and data customers. Terms of service are seemingly rigid structures which help these entities save face, and are a required prerequisite imposed by businesses on the platform operators, before engaging in any type of business relation, to minimise losses, naturally. As a result, users are forced to adopt this jargon to remain seen and heard.

This ecosystem is a result of nearly two decades of learning how to assimilate the advances of the information age into neoliberal, capitalist economics, and it seems to many that, for the time, the Nash equilibrium has been reached, the game has been solved. The current state of the internet is this: there are eight or so websites, none of which large enough to acquire any of the others, each of which uses an identical format: 'reels', 'shorts', i.e. short form content which is fed by endless swiping, rather than seeked out. Dopamine drip-feeding. Everyone who has money, or could potentially have money if circumstance presently won't permit them to, needs to be made to feel safe, lulled into the warm embrace of the phone they clutch with sweaty palms and blind submission. This is a picture of a perfect world, as conceived by business-'scientists' and pragmatists. 

This process is not entirely without merit, for example, it aids to counteract the extremising effects of anonymity such as trolling and online hate speech, but there is a limit of these measures which do not require forcing people to speak exclusively in euphemisms. Discourse about global affairs is routinely carried out on these platforms, and people voicing their opinions are having to pick through their thesauri like playing a game of minesweeper. In view of this, the inventiveness of the public in creating neologisms is commendable, and quite interesting to dissect. But it shouldn't be necessary. It can even be harmful, because unfortunately not all human struggles can be framed in terms of the often-so-called 'objective moral good' of consumerist capitalism. There are, in fact, other ways of thinking in this world, and of living. Peace in the west is an unusual phenomenon in human history. Wars are ongoing, often times started and sustained over the economic concerns of developed nations and carried out by proxy. These are topics which require discussion in any state trying to approach a healthy democracy. 

The effects of war, while almost never truly internalised by people who have never been near one, should only be conveyed in an explicit manner. Imagine being an assault victim, and the people around you caring more about the connotations of the words they use to describe this crime, than about helping. Were they to use the excuse that they can't handle speaking clearly and bluntly about something that happened to you, not them, of course it would seem disingenuous. One could claim that this euphemistic language can be viewed as some subtle form of the bystander effect, a well documented phenomenon in which people refuse to help their fellow person in the presence of others (personally, I don't want to believe this). Another claim is that the system, be it what it may, needs to anaesthetise these discussions to propagate itself through time. Either way, desperate cries for help are often required to transform themselves into understated requests for assistance, far easier to ignore, to be heard at all. However, every once in a while something truly uncensorable pierces through.

Aaron Bushnell, a 25-year-old US-airman, immolated himself in front of the Israeli embassy two days ago, in an act of protest against the genocidal activities of the state of Israel in Gaza. The ensuing public reaction evades any attempt to describe it, other than to call it appalling. Central to it has been the dissemination of pictures and video of Bushnell's death, which he live-streamed to the platform Twitch. This was undisputedly the most crucial element of his protest. The footage has been making the rounds in the internet and the media, and is bringing a renewed, intensified urgency to the discussion, with Bushnell being both honoured and condemned in public discourse. One can try to identify extant social ills by the reactions of individual users, but discussing the reaction of the centralised publishing houses is far more significant.

(I do recognise the possibility that I will be asked to alter this post to remove this photo)

Larger newspapers refuse to use 'protest' in their headline, choosing rather the austere phrasing '...US airman dies after setting himself on fire...' or variations. Conversely, the sound of Bushnell's voice shouting 'free Palestine' in his last moments has become a deeply impactful clip that pro-Palestinian tiktoks are set to. But one aspect has been wiped from search engine results and most platforms completely: the original video.

I am likely to lose some people in this section, but I urge anyone who takes this issue seriously to seek out the uncensored footage. Bushnell did not set himself on fire in order to be hidden by a blur. He did not commit suicide for advertising real estate. If you claim to acknowledge this form of protest, you have to let it affect you the way Bushnell intended it to. This morning, I forced myself to watch him struggle with his lighter as the guards patrolling the premises began to approach him, eventually succeeding in setting his own leg on fire, shouting at the top of his lungs, the pain stiffening his entire body as his screams for freedom gradually tetered out, his service uniform beginning to disintegrate into charred shreds, the blackened skin of his face, hands, and legs exposed, eventually collapsing onto the concrete. We, the public, could have prevented this. We have his blood on our hands, and as such, have a responsibility to confront ourselves with the consequences of insufficient action. Needless to say, the same goes for footage from Gaza depicting war crimes, injured or dead men, women, and children, destroyed cities, and the grotesque and deplorable behaviour of the perpetrators of this violence. Bushnell's protest has moved me to write this piece, and I am embarrased that I did not do so before, that I needed him to kill himself to prompt me to use my damn voice. That I wasn't appalled enough by the actions of Israel on their own.

In the coming days, Bushnell's mental state will be called into question by thousands of people who have never met him. He will have the entirety of his short life examined at the hands of people trying to make a fucking point out of it. And, in the end, the 'mental illness' hypothesis is likely to prevail, because it is the most politically correct. I hope I am wrong in making this prediction. I want it to be clear that I am prescribing how I think people should respond to this situation, not giving a sociologically motivated, let alone 'practical' explanation. People have begun to discuss the quantitative effectiveness of immolation as a form of protest. This is a perverse misuse of ideas of scientific rationalism, which denies the humanity of the protester, and is unconscionable. To label such a person as mentally ill is dehumanising, likewise is it to hide their grief, pain, and physical demise behind a blurred rectangle, so that money can be made.

His death, and other such events, don't have to be exploited for profit. I raise the question as to why these corporations, these entities even need to save face, if most of the consumers agree that they're faceless? If these mechanisms appear spontaneously as a result of capitalism, which seems to be a result of the sad realities of human nature, the central question is, which consciousness is flying the ship? I can't say, although I have been thinking about it a great deal. Conspiracy theories thrive in the void of an answer. In the meantime, while we wait for an answer, we have an individual responsibility to mind what we say and how we say it, because words cause actions, and actions matter, therefore words matter. Of course, algospeak will eventually just be normal speaking. Semantic drift has seen these words enter everyday, offline use, which is a solace of sorts. The mistakes committed by our generation will at least be remembered by linguists. In the same way, censored news footage has become normal due to the very real concerns and distresses of normal people (which I don't wish to diminish). We should be maintaining a civilisation which is comfortable and free of such horrors. But these horrors don't go away by speaking softly of them, in a vain attempt to make it easier to deny the reality of their existence.